


Unwilling Experiments, or: Strucker is a Bastard

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [68]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Minor Changes, Codependency, Gen, Unsavoury Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6690073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They are <i>monsters,”</i> Wanda murmurs, watching the window, arms curled around her knees where they’re drawn up to her chest. “No more or less. Liars and thieves and Nazis, and nothing good at all.”</p><p>Pietro breezes by, presses a kiss to Wanda’s hair and starts to pace. He does not like this. He hates Strucker and List for this, for doing this to Wanda, hates how Wanda is barely allowed out, hates the lies and HYDRA and all that has been done to them in the guise of making them <i>‘stronger’.</i></p><p>“We should leave,” he says. “Go to the Avengers. Even they are not as bad as this.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unwilling Experiments, or: Strucker is a Bastard

**Author's Note:**

> Written from a single brief idea I had when I was supposed to be writing my dissertation that unfortunately got stuck in my head and became this. Also I may have slightly mixed MCU Barton with a small touch of _Ultimates_ Barton - so less human disaster, more disaster to humans.

Wanda is used, now, to waking up from surgery with no idea what they have done _this_ time. She checks the veins of probability that she sees snaking through the world, tries to find what they have done to her biology today.

The first time, the first experiment, was the sceptre and the virus. She and Pietro had woken from their fevers with scarlet and speed respectively, and all others dead. They were given two weeks to recover and then sent in for a new round of studies and experiments - biological samples taken, including painful ones taken from their bone marrow, samples of their cerebrospinal fluid stolen out of their bodies, hair samples, skin samples, cheek swabs and blood and who knew how much else taken when they were unconscious on operating slabs. Then more experiments, more sceptre, more viruses, more samples taken.

(It had been somewhere along through these that Wanda had started seeing veins of probability in the world, twisting this way and that. It had been somewhere along through these that Strucker had promised it was “To make you stronger, so you may protect your nation,” and the veins of probability had rung so clearly the note of _lies_ to almost drown out the whispered _lie_ from his mind.)

(She had told them she could only see minds if she wasn’t in them, and that was true. She hadn’t told them that she left traces of her scarlet in all their minds, just in case.)

She blinks awake to see the ceiling and not Pietro’s worried face, which means either Pietro is still in surgery or Strucker is keeping them separate ( _again_ ) to tell them some truth-lie about what he and List have done. She sits up, and doubles over in pain as her abdomen complains.

“Ah, you are awake.” She tilts her head, looks towards the window where Strucker stands, arms behind his back at parade rest, turning to look at her. “It is a good thing we moved to here, I think. Leaving the sceptre the Avengers were tracing back in Novi Grad, coming here. So much less conflict.”

 _Not in Novi Grad?_ she wonders, and then remembers, the week before, trucks moving out, Pietro’s arm around her, her heavily sedated lest her scarlet lash out. Pietro tucking her close pressing a kiss to her hair as the trucks wobbled over dirt roads, onto cobbles and away from the city of their birth.

“Still though,” he says. “It does limit the experiments we can do. No more sceptre to enhance people. Other means become necessary.”

Wanda stretches out her scarlet, lets it show in the world as a tangible threat if Strucker continues dancing around the topic. He is here because he wants to tell her what he has done _this_ time, such is always the way. “Tell me,” she croaks. “Or so help me-”

“You’re pregnant,” Strucker says, voice filled with false cheer. “Congratulations. We extracted eggs during an earlier round of experiments, and we have sperm and blood samples from a variety of people with lesser gifts, and of course from your brother.”

Wanda looks at Strucker in nothing less than absolute horror.

“Oh you find that wrong do you? I don’t see why you would, your brother and you so  _close_.” 

Wanda glares, where she is doubled over on her bed, arms wrapped around her aching belly. This is _wrong_.

“You carry three foetuses, right now. One from your brother, one from a pyrokinetic, one from a supposed empath. They may not all last - none of them may last is List’s fear - but we will try and try and try again. We need more enhanced, if we are to fight the Avengers.”

In the pitch silence of the room his mind sings out _Lie_ with depressing certainty.

Strucker clicks his heels together, turns to the door. “I shall leave you to consider your impending motherhood,” he says. “And maybe your brother shall visit you later.”

Wanda curls on her bed and _hates_.

 

* * *

 

Pietro arrives with a wave of blue, a rush of fresh air. He perches, as ever, on the edge of her bed, waits for her to curl into him before wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

“I am here,” he promises. “I am here if you need me.”

Wanda curls against her brother, flicks scarlet fingers and fills his mind with her memories.

Around her, Pietro’s arms tense. “That is _wrong_ ,” he says, arms wrapping more firmly around her. “What do you want to do?”

Wanda gives a bitter laugh. “Kill him,” she says, slipping into rapid Sokovian. She lets Pietro shift her closer, tuck her under his chin.

“For you,” he murmurs. “Gladly.”

For a while there is silence. Pietro, still and certain his arms around Wanda, Wanda, curled in his arms, watching the veins of probability. “There may be more,” she whispers. “Foetuses created and saved up, he said they would try again if this failed. They may have others.”

Pietro’s hand is gentle in her hair, combing out knots. “Can you see if that is true?”

Wanda knows, from the softly singing bond between their minds, that he does not mean with telepathy. “I will try.”

 

* * *

 

“Five others living,” she whispers, when she has found the weave of the new lives in all the red veins around them. Pietro’s question sings down the bond between their mind. _Low_ , Wanda sends back. _Only one has even a chance_. Wanda can see, just as clearly the veins of probability for the foetuses hidden in her own womb, two slender already-fragmenting lines of plain scarlet, and one, slightly stronger, laced with Pietro’s ever-present blue.

(They have not told Strucker of the veins of probability. If Wanda has her way they never will.)

“Could you-” he pauses, uncertain. Wanda watches him, unflinching. “The probability,” he whispers, quiet enough that watching cameras cannot hear. “You see it as veins, but like your scarlet. Could your scarlet _change_ it?”

Wanda considers, sends out scarlet invisible towards the veins of this-and-that that float before her. The vein twists and responds, fragments and shatters, haemorrhaging probability into the ether to becoming more scarlet. Wanda, tucked against Pietro’s chest, nods. “Give me a moment.”

The other veins are easy to find now, easy to twist the vein of probability to her decision. As each breaks apart, their very possibility gone, their probability vaporising into scarlet smoke, Wanda feels the potential lives wink out, far away. Her scarlet fingers hover around the veins emerging from her own stomach.

“It is up to you,” Pietro murmurs, seeing her hesitation. “I will protect you all the same.”

Wanda finds the veins of the pyrokinetic and the supposed empath - distinct from Pietro’s veins of probability which are _always_ laced with his blue - and twists them to her decision. The veins twist and change, cells reabsorbed for nutrients at this early stage. The last, the one created of her and Pietro she considers.

(She knows it is still all too likely to die.)

(She knows, too, it will give them attention they do not care for, assumptions that are  _wrong_.)

(She knows, further, that this child _in potentia_ has more chance of powers and life than any other, and that, more than anything, it would be _theirs_  close family to both of them when they had none but each other left.)

“It is ours,” she murmurs to Pietro. “If they have stolen my eggs then this one we keep. It is fully our blood.”

“I will check,” he says. “Find out what they took and how much. I will destroy it.”

Wanda relaxes against her brother, and sleeps.

 

* * *

 

“The castle fell,” Wanda murmurs, when Pietro next visits. They have been training him twice as hard, now they cannot train Wanda - not that they ever understood the true scope of her powers anyway - and his visits are rarer, with him looking more tired, more beaten up and battered with each visit. “The Avengers,” she murmurs. “Went to Novi Grad, to the castle, for the sceptre, because Strucker and List and all of them are HYDRA and liars.”

Pietro casts his mind back, remembers classes on history, remembers where he has heard HYDRA before. “Nazis,” he whispers. “We were recruited by _Nazis_.”

“They are _monsters_ ,” Wanda murmurs, watching the window, arms curled around her knees where they’re drawn up to her chest. “No more or less. Liars and thieves and Nazis, and nothing good at all.”

Pietro breezes by, presses a kiss to Wanda’s hair and starts to pace. He does not like this. He hates Strucker and List for this, for doing this to Wanda, hates how Wanda is barely allowed out, hates the lies and HYDRA and all that has been done to them in the guise of making them ‘ _stronger_ ’.

“We should leave,” he says. “Go to the Avengers. Even they are not as bad as this.”

Wanda’s eyes are bright and dark watching him. She wants to say something, he knows, but not so loud where the cameras might hear. It was foolish of him to even say it aloud, but he has done it before. Strucker knows, by now, that he always bows to Wanda’s decisions. Wanda stretches out a hand, Pietro bows his head, looks recalcitrant, sits by her side, her hand held delicately in his.

“There is Stark,” she murmurs, quiet as a breath, lips barely moving. “Still among them.”

“For this,” Pietro says softly, “For you. Better Stark than HYDRA.”

Wanda looks at him, dark eyes clear and watchful. There is no trace of probing, straining scarlet. Just Wanda. She blinks, a single brief moment, her chin dipping just enough to make it a nod. “When?” she murmurs.

He cannot help his smile. “Whenever. I have been ready from the start.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s scarlet breaks the locks, Pietro’s speed finds their bags, finds the memory stick he had stashed in his room filled with information he had stolen in searching out samples, finds their route out.

“The samples?” Wanda asks and Pietro only shakes his head.

“I destroyed them. I promised you I would.” He offers her his arms, gently lifting her legs up when she steps towards him. “There is Strucker left to kill, if you still want to?” 

The offer is gently given, the mildest of suggestions more than anything. In Wanda’s eyes scarlet flares. “I will rip his mind _apart_.”

 

* * *

 

Strucker is… there is not much left of the monocled man when they leave his office, Wanda’s scarlet darting out into all the minds she can reach, guiding them away from the Baron’s office, giving them all reasons to believe that Strucker does not want to be disturbed for the day.

“Twenty four hours,” Wanda says as they walk through the base, scarlet keeping them hidden from the minds that pass them by. “No more, no less.”

Pietro nods, offers her his arms. “There is a jet, outside. Can you make them fly us out?”

Again, Wanda’s eyes glow with scarlet.

 

* * *

 

It is a long flight, and hard for Wanda to hold the pilot’s mind for it all. She settles, in the end, for a single scarlet command, binding and bracing the pilot’s mind to the order. _Fly us to the Avengers’ tower._

Wanda sleeps. Pietro watches. The pilot flies them out over the continent, out over the ocean and on and on to America.

 

* * *

 

They wake, slowly. Wanda sees the city rise out of the horizon, changes her order to the pilot’s mind to set them down, quietly, outside the city, then shakes Pietro awake.

“We are here.”

Pietro’s eyes dart, their bags, the window to the city outside, the pilot in the chair. “They cannot live,” he murmurs. “If they wake, if they tell-”

Wanda’s hands twist in scarlet. The pilot chokes, asphyxiates, dies. “What is necessary,” she says. “No more, no less.” Pietro slings their bags over his shoulders, checks the memory stick zipped into his pocket, offers his arm to Wanda.

“Follow the landmark,” she says. “It is obvious. I will get us in.”

 

* * *

 

Getting in might have involved setting off alarms. Stark is already in his garish suit when they blur out of the lift in Pietro’s blue, Wanda’s feet finding the steady ground. She lifts her hands towards those assembled, palms upwards, outwards. She knows that, behind her, Pietro is following suit, albeit with a mocking expression.

“We are not here to fight,” she says. “We are here for help. We escaped from HYDRA.”

“We got all the HYDRA bases,” the Captain said. “Got the sceptre only yesterday.”

“That was not the last base,” Wanda says, shaking her head. “Strucker moved us out, to a new one. Said we were his only successes and had to be moved to safety to continue experiments.” She half turns, glances to Pietro. His hand blurs to his pocket, plucks out the memory stick, tosses it forwards. The woman in black catches it. “That has what Pietro managed to steal before we left. They went too far.”

The woman with the memory stick looks at it consideringly, the man with the bow passes her a tablet without a thought. The greying man, playing with his glasses, speaks. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

Wanda nods towards the memory stick. “That has everything Pietro managed to steal. It should have enough.” Her arms are aching, starting to shake at being held up so long, with them so tired. “Please,” she says. “Believe us. We would not come here if we had another choice.”

There is a moment of blinding bright light, and Stark taps something on his suit. “No weapons,” he says. “Though if they’re Strucker’s ‘successes’ they may be weapons on their own.”

“Telekinesis,” Wanda says. “Telepathy. Pietro has speed. If those are weapons then we are weapons.”

(As ever probability remains their secret.)

“It’s true,” says the woman in black, still tapping away at the tablet the memory stick is now stuck out of the end of. “They’re telling the truth. There’s another base.”

At last they are able to let their arms drop.

 

* * *

 

After discussion, Stark, the Captain and the giant with the hammer leave, following the woman in black. They are left with the man with the glasses, the archer, and a woman who’s expression is so severe they expect her to pull a gun on them at any moment. Glasses-man scrubs a hand over his face, before offering it to them.

“I’m Bruce Banner,” he says, shaking Wanda’s hand and then Pietro’s. “AKA, the other guy.” ( _Hulk_ , mouths the archer behind him.) “I’m also a doctor, so if you need seeing to…?”

Wanda and Pietro share a glance, Pietro nodding minutely in the way that Wanda knows he will not judge her for her choice. “They implanted foetuses,” she says. “Said if they could not use the sceptre to make more, they would have to use Pietro and I.”

“Pietro,” the archer says, nodding to him. “And you are?”

She pauses a moment. “Wanda. Maximoff. We are twins.”

Banner sighs, scrubs a hand over his face again. “I treat disease and injury, mainly. I don’t know what to do about foetuses, but I can give you a basic check if you want? We’d have to call in someone else to get you properly looked at.”

The twins share a look again. “Yes,” Wanda says. “Please.”

 

* * *

 

Banner leads Wanda up to a lab, the severe woman following, leaving Pietro with only the archer for company. He can feel Wanda reinforcing the bond between their minds, letting him dip into her mind and check on her as Banner begins to check her over, take her pulse and her blood pressure.

“I’m Clint,” the archer says, wandering over to a counter. “You hungry?”

Pietro considers. “Very,” he says. “We have not eaten since we left.”

“How’s veggie fryup sound? Eggs, toast, cheese, onions?”

He shrugs, “Anything. Too hungry to care.”

Clint laughs. “I know that feeling. Gimme a few minutes.”

 

* * *

 

“What do you know about what they did?” Banner asks, once he’s directed Wanda to the cot in what she assumes is their medical area. He’s by the sink, washing his hands as thoroughly as any of the Doctors who had worked on them. The woman in blue is standing outside the door, Banner having murmured something to her in English so rapid that Wanda couldn’t catch it. 

Wanda shrugs. “The experiments or the foetuses?”

“Either?” Banner says, drying his hands, walking over to her and reaching out to take her pulse. “Whichever you think is more relevant.”

“They used the sceptre to give us our powers,” Wanda says. “Everyone else died, but we did not. They kept trying to change us even further, give us more powers, see where our limits were, why we had gained powers and not anyone else.” She moves her arm so that Banner can take her blood pressure, and briefly compares how much this is like the castle, when she would talk mentally to Pietro as they were given check ups. 

“Right,” he says. “Any of that work out?”

Wanda shakes her head. “No one else. The sceptre only affected us. They had another who could do unusual things, Vladislav, but his power was not from the sceptre.”

Banner’s tone is oddly interested as he moves to take the blood pressure of her other arm. “Oh?”

“He could… convince people. They used him to convince everyone to agree with them, to do as they were told. His powers were… learned, I think, but unnatural. They moved us but not him when they learned you were getting close to them. They did not need him at the new base. I - and so Pietro - are immune to him. The,” Wanda pauses lifts her hand to gesture at her head. “Telepathy. I could see what he was trying to do.”

“Neat trick,” Banner comments. “Now look at the wall while I check your eyes?”

Wanda stares past him as he lifts the bright light up. “Do you still need to know about the foetuses?”

Banner considers, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he focusses on her eyes. “It’d help. J.A.R.V.I.S., you up?”

From somewhere above them comes, “Of course, Dr. Banner.” Wanda’s eyes dart to Banner.

“He’s a program,” Banner says. “Runs the building and a lot else. He can help with notes for this part, so we have something to tell whoever helps check up on the foetuses.”

Wanda nods, slowly, and resumes staring at the wall. “Sometimes they would take us into surgery with no warning. They would only tell us afterwards what they had done or tried to do. Pietro heals fast, they learned that from doing that. I do not know everything they learned from me. One day… two weeks ago? Three? I woke up from surgery. Strucker told me they had implanted three foetuses. All from my eggs. And then it was… one from a… pyrokinetic?” Banner nods, switches the light to his other hand, examines her other eye. “One from a ‘supposed empath’, and one-” Wanda pauses. This is the question. Does she tell them _this?_ “The last from Pietro.”

Banner stands back, clicks the light off. “Ah.”

“Pietro and I are _twins_ ,” Wanda says, her hands lifting off the cot to rub nervously over her stomach. “No more, no less. We are close because we have no family left but each other, but we are _family_. We are siblings _first_ , before anything else. Doing that… Strucker doing that was _wrong_ , more wrong than just the foetuses.”

“Hey,” Banner says, voice gentle, hands lightly catching her wrists. “It’s all right. It’s not your fault. It’s not Pietro’s fault. It’s Strucker’s and his lot’s fault. No one here is going to judge you. A lot of us have our own stories with experiments. It’s all right.”

His eyes are calm and gentle and certain. His mind, green and purple and hiding something made of nothing but anger deep within, is calm and honest. Wanda breathes, calmly and deeply.

“Is it possible,” she asks. “To know if they are still there, and if they were, which ones?”

Banner’s hands slip off her wrists, pick up the tablet on the cot. “I don’t know. J.A.R.V.I.S.?”

“At this stage, I do not know if we would be able to identify foetal bodies,” says the disembodied voice of J.A.R.V.I.S.. “Implanted embryos are usually no more than a week old, and at two to three weeks more they will have only attached themselves to the uterine wall. They will not have developed fully into foetuses at that stage, and so would be next to impossible for us to pick up, even with the advanced medical equipment. Perhaps in a few more weeks we would be able to tell, with suitable scanners and a test of the amniotic sac.”

Wanda looks to Banner.

“Not yet,” he says. “Maybe in a few weeks more. I can have J.A.R.V.I.S. schedule it, if you’d like?”

 

* * *

 

By the time Wanda emerges Pietro is wolfing down his second plate of food, and carefully guarding the one beside him, set aside for her.

“Eat,” he says, carefully kicking the stool just far enough away she can sit on it. “It’s good.”

“I’m a good cook,” Clint says as Wanda sits. “I can make more if you need it.”

Pietro grins, “Its good.” 

Wanda elbows him lightly, her mouth full of onion and fried egg. Pietro only grins wider, but he knows what she means all the same, and says what she can’t with her mouth full of food.

“Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

When Steve, Tony, Thor and Nat get back the twins are asleep on the sofa, legs entangled, heads at opposite ends. Clint had tucked one of the horribly ugly afghans Nat liked to collect over them, all blue and red and a purple as violent as a bruise.

“Was the info good?” he asks, as they step off of the Quinjet.

“Perfect,” Nat says, stripping off her electro-bracelets. “Everything on there was in their files. Strucker was there, Doctor List, and enough people to make up the lack at the castle.”

“What I want to know,” Steve says, “Is how Strucker got away with so little trace.”

“And why Tweedledum and Tweedledee decided to leave,” Stark adds.

Clint nods, frowns. “You’d do best hearing that from them,” he says. “And they’re sleeping now. I’ll keep watch, tell you when they wake.”

 

* * *

 

“Tony’s jumpy still,” Steve murmurs to Clint as Stark marches his way up to his lab. “Something the guy at the castle said is still needling at him. Keep an eye on him?”

Clint half-smiles. “Nat and I always do.”

 

* * *

 

The twins stir awake slowly and quietly, and it takes Clint a moment to see their breathing change from sleeping to waking. Pietro is up quite quickly, whisking away in a cloud of blue and returning after barely a moment. Wanda stirs more slowly, but wakes fully when her brother returns, offering her a steaming mug. Clint can smell the chamomile Natasha goes for when she has headaches even from his vantage point on the stairs.

It’s unlikely, he thinks, that he’ll have another chance this good to observe the twins without pretences on either side. They haven’t seemed to have lied about anything yet, but he might as well see what he can glean before alerting the others, and expecting the twins to explain everything to all of them. As he watches Pietro gently tucks his sister against himself, Wanda leaning against him easily, balancing her mug so as not to spill a drop.

From the distance he can’t hear a thing, and even reading their lips can’t guess what they’re saying. He assumes they’re speaking their native language - whatever that might be - but Nat’s not around to help with identifying it.

As he walks down to them he makes a mental list of what they know about them simply from observation. Close. Attentive to each other. Joking with each other, at ease with each other. Wary of everyone else.

The mental note of _close_ comes back to him. They’ve said they’re twins, and Clint has seen some few siblings as close as they are. They’ve said that HYDRA went too far, and Clint suspects that has something to do with the implanted foetuses.

He wonders how long it will take others on the team to jump to conclusions.

 

* * *

 

“You know,” the woman in black ( _Natasha_ , she had said) says when the twins have told their tale, “That you don’t have to carry them if you don’t want to?”

The knuckles of Wanda’s hands are white where they hold Pietro’s. “We don’t know if they took all of my eggs. Strucker never specified, and I could not find it in List’s mind. Between the option of these children and no children at all I choose these ones.”

“And you two…,” Stark starts, only to trail off when the twins pin him with a glare.

“We are _twins_ ,” Wanda says. “No more. No less. Strucker was wrong to think this does not horrify us.”

Stark’s expression is clearly disbelieving.

“If we are too close for your comfort,” Pietro says, biting out the words, “It is because  _your_ bombs _orphaned us_ when were _ten_.”

That garners a different kind of silence.

 

* * *

 

“There’s gonna be a party,” Clint says, leading them down a hall. “Celebrate chasing down much of HYDRA, retrieving the Sceptre, all that malarkey. Tony’s throwing it.”

He doesn’t miss how Pietro glares, how Wanda’s lip curls.

“Most of the team doesn’t quite trust you yet, and well…,” he glances to Wanda. “There’ll be alcohol, and in your state-”

“It is not wise,” Wanda finishes for him. Clint nods.

“If Stark will be there,” Pietro says, “We will stay out of the way.”

Clint lets himself smile a touch at that. The twins are easy to understand, like some agents he’s worked with - like Nat - who switched sides, still working on the simplest tenets of training. Except, he supposes, the twins aren’t working from just training but also life experience, but the outcome is the same. Simple rules. Simple yes/no decisions, everything distilled down to absolutes.

“Come on,” he says. “We’ve had some rooms set up, we had J.A.R.V.I.S. make sure there’s food and space for you both. Also TV in case you get bored; Tony’s parties always go on too long.”

He hears and mentally translates the muttered Serbian for, “Stark the show-off.”

 

* * *

 

The rooms are large, spacious, but they don’t expect much else from a building designed and built by Stark. The food, set on the counter, appears to be assorted party food, small nibbles, but plenty of it. Pietro tries a little of everything, and points out the good ones to Wanda.

“Are we safe here?” he asks Wanda, when they are settled on the sofa, each with plates. “The Avengers, inside this landmark?”

Wanda pauses, opens her eyes to the veins of probability around them. “Safe enough,” she murmurs. “There are a few risks, but they are to the Avengers and us only if we intervene.”

Pietro grins. “As though we would intervene for _Stark_.”

Wanda, though, is silent, lost within the twisting veins of probability.

 

* * *

 

Wanda feels when the vein of probability twists into reality, and jerks from her relaxed doze on the sofa. Pietro beside her is instantly alert, his hand gentle on her arm.

“They made something,” Wanda whispers. “Stark did, with the Sceptre, and some prototype of his.” Her eyes are darting, following the veins of probability that Pietro cannot see. “It will cause chaos, destroy cities, kill…” Wanda cannot count the number of tapering, dying veins of probability in the air around them.

“Where is it?” Pietro whispers, standing, scooping her up as Wanda winds an arm around his shoulder to balance herself. “Where do we go?”

“Up,” Wanda murmurs, “The main room, it will appear there.”

 

* * *

 

They spill into the room as Ultron does, multiple bodies flying through the air like Stark’s own suit.

“Stark,” Pietro spits. “Ruiner of everything.”

Wanda lets scarlet spin out from her hands, restrains a robot as best she is able as the severe woman shoots at it. There is a met glance for a mere moment, and Wanda hears the subtle ring of _respect_ that echoes out from the woman’s deep sapphire mind.

 

* * *

 

“What was that?” the Captain asks, when the last remaining robot falls. “And where did you two come from? I thought you were staying in your rooms?”

“I sensed the panic,” Wanda says. (Probability is still their secret.) “And Stark is the one with the guilty mind.”

As one the Avengers turn to him. Banner pauses. “Ultron,” he says. “It actually…”

“Wait you made Ultron?” the Captain asks. “ _That_ was Ultron?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” from Natasha.

“What were you-”

“When did-”

“Bruce, I can’t believe-”

 _“SHUT UP,”_ yells Pietro at the top of his lungs. There is, mercifully, silence.

“Are you _children_ ,” Wanda asks, “That you think shouting solves _anything?_ ”

The severe woman smiles very slightly. “They’ve got a point.”

“I’m with Hill,” Natasha says after a further moment.

Across from her, shield in hand, scrubbing the other over his face, the Captain sighs. “Thor,” he says. “If you want to go and track them down that would be great.” The blond giant nods, swings his hammer into a thrumming circle and hurtles out of the smashed window. “Stark, Bruce, explain what the _hell_ you were thinking doing this without telling anyone.”

Clint notices that Stark makes no comment about _language._

 

* * *

 

“Ultron was created to _protect_ ,” Bruce reiterates to the Avengers’ doubtful faces. Stark, hopped up on anger, is tense as a spring in his own seat.

“Evidently,” Rhodes says, his eyes on Stark, “That didn’t work out so well.”

Stark, barely looking up from the tablet he’s tapping away at shrugs, “What, you expect me to predict that we create something able to snap it’s own safety protocols?”

“We expect you to at least _tell us you’re making the fucking thing_ ,” Clint says.

In the corner, curled close on a glass-free patch of sofa, the twins sit and watch.

 

* * *

 

“We come with you,” Pietro says when the Avengers make plans to go to South Africa. “This Ultron, you do not know who he is, what he can do yet. He is not what Stark made him.”

Wanda’s hand on his arm quiets him. “You need what help you can get.”

The Captain glances between them. “Are you sure?” he asks, eyes on Wanda. “In your state-”

“It is early,” Wanda says. “And Pietro will be there.”

Pietro’s face is fierce and certain. “I will not let _anyone_ harm her.”

 

* * *

 

The ship is a large hulking mass of rust and metal. Around it are other such steel carcasses, left to waste away on the flattened plain of mud. “That’s what happens when technology becomes obsolete,” Stark comments over comms. “It gets left to the ages.”

Clint half-laughs. “What about when you become obsolete, Tony?”

“Never gonna happen,” is the cocky reply, and the twins glance to each other in disgust at Stark’s arrogance.

Clint sets them down on a grassy rise, the Captain already rattling off a plan as the team stands and disembarks. He gets to the twins last.

“Wanda, Pietro… stay back. Don’t get involved immediately.” 

There is, Wanda can see, concern tingeing his mind.

“Not even for reconnaissance?” Pietro asks immediately.

Soon after Wanda adds, “We _are_ here to help you with Ultron.” 

The Captain looks incredibly awkward. “You got dragged into this. None of us want you getting hurt.”

Pietro takes one glance at the red-and-gold glint of Stark’s flying suit and laughs.

 

* * *

 

The ship is dark and as dingy as the cells they were kept in at the castle outside Novi Grad. Held back by Wanda’s hand Pietro stays in the shadows with her, waiting behind the Avengers themselves. 

It is from the shadows they spot the small man behind Ultron’s steel and silver body.

It takes only a shared glance to confirm that they both saw the same man, the man who so skilfully convinced so many citizens of Novi Grad to volunteer. Now, now Wanda can see the nigh-hypnotic coil of his mind, a coiling, half-dancing snake, teasing eyes to follow where it goes.

Wanda thinks his name even as Pietro hisses it out.

“ _Vladislav.”_

 

* * *

 

Wanda is hesitant to tag the teams’ minds with her scarlet, help her track them, know where they are, but with the ship turning so rapidly into chaos it is the only thing she can think to do. The drones - six left after four others have taken the vibranium - are already causing chaos for the team, and flying Pietro’s speed is no use against them.

Scarlet dances out of her fingers, twists around one drone, tears it out of the air and down to where her scarlet, closer to her, is stronger, where Pietro’s speed can do more damage to it.

“Maximoffs,” the drone murmurs even as its arms are ripped off. “More than human. You are welcome to join me.” 

Pietro tears past at high speed, tears off one of the drone’s legs. Scarlet flares as Wanda twists her hands, twists the drone’s head _off_ and the lights of its eyes fade.

Pietro skids to a halt by her side. “That was interesting,” he says. “What now?”

 

* * *

 

Wanda feels when Vladislav’s words twist into Thor’s mind, quiet and taunting and bringing up dancing memories of a woman with black eyes, a warping red stone, a man of ice and sharp teeth and golden magic. She reaches for Pietro, her brother already moving to scoop her into his arms. They are by Thor’s side in a moment.

“Calm,” Wanda murmurs, scarlet stretching out of her fingers. “He tricks, he lies, let me-”

“I am fine,” Thor says, brushing her hands away. (He is not, Wanda can see he is not, that Vladislav’s words have tricked their way into Thor’s mind and are stirring up visions and memories and ideas old and vague and dangerous.) “Go,” he says. “Back to the fight. The others need you.”

She steps back, watching him slump against the wall, and nods slowly. In his mind, Pietro is spitting curses.

Wanda feels as the Captain falls to Vladislav’s whispered words.

 

* * *

 

They can do nothing to halt the ream of memories brought up in the Captain’s mind, but Wanda manages to find the twisted, broken edges of Natasha’s memories, and create a damming wall of ice against the blizzard of her nightmare.

Then they hear the roar of of something vast and horrible outside.

“Hulk,” whispers Pietro.

 

* * *

 

Clint, they know, is going through the ship. Everyone else is down, the drones gone. Ultron is… Wanda finds a fragmented memory of Ultron’s body exploding against mud and the rusted hulk of a ship in Stark’s mind, and then a fresher memory of the Hulk.

“The city,” Wanda murmurs, even as Pietro scoops her into his arms. “He will destroy, we have to stop him.”

 

* * *

 

 _Stark is an idiot_ , Wanda thinks, as Pietro carries her at high speed through Johannesburg. Flighting the Hulk only made him _stronger_ , that was evident from everything they had seen or studied on him, and with their focus on vengeance, on destroying the Avengers they had studied a lot. Wanda curls as close as she can to Pietro, Pietro holding her tightly so she doesn’t slip with her hands before her instead of around his shoulder, her scarlet webbing into a cat’s cradle of bright magic between her fingers.

“One chance,” she murmurs to Pietro. “One chance only.”

They hurtle between the grappling Iron Man suit and the Hulk and Wanda throws the scarlet.

 

* * *

 

Wanda feels it hit the Hulk’s mind, feels the bright and violent green-purple of it buck and thrash and fight the threads of red soothing it to sleep. Pietro is taking them farther away, enough that it is hard to keep the scarlet strong and she taps his shoulder, makes him turn them around back to where Hulk is slowly, so slowly, crumpling into sleep.

By the time they arrive Hulk has fallen and is slowly shrinking back into Banner. Stark is - without prompting and with surprising delicacy given his ridiculously large suit - picking up Banner.

“Back to the Quinjet Skywalkers,” he calls, before lifting up and off back towards the ship and the jet.

 

* * *

 

Wanda cannot find Vladislav as they near the Quinjet, but she can feel Clint’s mind still in the ship, and all of the rest of the team too. The Captain’s voice is shaken over comms, Thor’s voice worried but certain. Natasha sounds awful, and Wanda fears the dam of ice may have broken all the same and only made the rush of rising memories worse.

Then she feels Clint’s mind come under threat from whispered words.

 

* * *

 

Vladislav is already convulsing on the floor when they arrive, Pietro setting Wanda down by Barton and Natasha, away from Vladislav. His lip curls.

“You know him?” Barton asks.

“The castle,” Wanda says, even as she sends scarlet into Natasha’s mind, tries to chase away the unwanted memories. “They used him to recruit people. We became immune when I gained my powers. My telepathy.”

Clint nods.

“He will try again,” Pietro says. “And he is with Ultron now.”

Barton bends, pulls the arrow from Vladislav’s forehead. From his quiver he pulls a new arrow, a bladed one, pulls the string of his bow back.

“No more Mr. Mind-fucky,” he murmurs, and lets the arrow fly.

 

* * *

 

Pietro conks out almost immediately on the jet, and the already-unconscious Banner sleeps most of the way as Clint flies them away. Wanda tilts against her brother’s where it rests on her shoulder, one hand gently combing through his hair, the other held firmly in his.

“Where now?” Clint asks Hill, up in the cockpit. “They’re all messed up, and after that…”

At the other end of the comms link Hill nods. “Somewhere safe. Media’s loving you, but no one else is. Best you keep your heads down.”

“Stark’s foundation-”

“Is working on it already. But stay quiet and away from here.”

Clint nods, clicks the comms off. At his shoulder the Captain sighs, pushes away, Tony settles into his seat. Wanda and Pietro sink into one another’s minds and sleep.

 

* * *

 

The others are gradually waking as they land, and as soon as the hatch opens Pietro is sprinting out, exploring the space around them. He’s back after a moment, half-smiling, half-wary, whispering something to Wanda in Sokovian. Clint crosses to Nat, offers her his arm to help lift her up. “You’re gonna be fine,” he promises, the same promise they’d offered to each other back in Budapest, in every other time they’ve been messed up like this. “Come on,” he murmurs. “Lets get you in. What do you want to bet Cooper’s tried to make cookies again?”

“No bet,” Natasha mutters in Russian. “I bet the Lego is out, though.”

 

* * *

 

The debate in their minds is quiet and constant. _Can we trust them?_  Pietro wonders, calls up the memory of Ultron’s words to them, the offer. 

 _We have to,_  Wanda sends back. _Better them than Strucker._

Pietro’s mind is still doubtful. _They **made**  Ultron,_ he points out.

Wanda’s head bows, but not in acquiescence. _They fight to end him_ , she offers back.  _To right their wrongs. Maybe they can teach Stark to be better._

Pietro doubts, still, but as ever he accepts Wanda’s decision.

 

* * *

 

“Has anyone heard from Doctor Cho?”

No one has, obviously, but Wanda recalls a memory, a mention from the soldier following Ultron, a whispered offer from Ultron himself. As the others begin to discuss how to check, if they should simply fly over, Wanda sends thoughts to Pietro’s mind as fast as he can run.

_He offered us-_

_–It’s dangerous-_

_Everything is dangerous, this might-_

_–Get us **killed** -_

_Or save the **world** -_

Pietro sighs. Wanda raises a hand. 

“I have an idea.”

 

* * *

 

“You listened,” Ultron says, sounding pleased. The twins stand, hand in white-knuckled hand at the doors of Doctor Cho’s facility. “Come in, come in! Let me explain everything.”

Wanda and Pietro glance to each other in the same moment, momentary, darting, before they follow Ultron’s silvery body into the building.

“We are making something new,” he says. “The vibranium, Doctor Cho’s Cradle technology. A new form of life, an upgrade from,” he gestures to himself, to them, “This.” Wanda’s brows raise, Ultron laughs.

“I’ll be downloading myself into the first one soon. Then,” he says, turns, stretches out metal fingers as though to cup each of their faces, “We will see if we can do that for you. I should hate to leave you behind.”

 

* * *

 

“He promises us true vengeance,” Pietro whispers into Wanda’s ear in Sokovian. “On Stark, on S.H.I.E.L.D. and America, on all that remains of HYDRA. If we work with the Avengers, stay with the plan, we lose that. Forever. If we cross him, he will _kill_ us.”

“No,” Wanda says, and lets scarlet dance out into her palm. “We have power now, we can take vengeance when we want it.” Pietro, still, is doubtful. “We listen,” she promises. “We see what he plans in truth. Leave if he lies like Strucker. Leave if he would kill all the the veins that I see vanishing, if he would follow the first path I saw for him. And if he promises truly…”

“We stay.”

Wanda nods, holds Pietro’s hand tightly. “We must be alert,” she says. “He has made more weapons of himself than Stark ever has, and in less time.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda sees the dream of chaos, and of destruction, and all it takes is the image sent to Pietro’s mind for him to be ready. She can feel how tense he is, every muscle ready and waiting on a hair trigger to carry her away to safety. 

“You will destroy everything,” she says, and she has known this, known this from the veins of probability that sprang into being as Ultron did, but now she has seen it, the dream of it within Ultron’s mind.

It isn’t a probability any more. It’s about to become fact.

 

* * *

 

There are veins and veins and veins of death in the lab and Wanda twists as many as she can, takes death and makes it only injury. She will not see more people dead after this. She wakes Helen from the dream of blue with a single flick of scarlet, and keeps her eyes fixed on the probability of Helen’s life even as Pietro takes her from the lab, tearing into the city.

“The body,” she says down comms, as soon as they have the ones they stashed before they went in. “In the lab, in the Cradle. You must get it. Pietro is tracking them. _You cannot let Ultron use it_.”

She wonders if saying that, warning them of that betrays her knowledge of probability, but sees nothing when she skims their minds. They assume telepathy, think nothing of probability, and Wanda will take what safety she can for that particular secret.

 

* * *

 

Chaos, chaos and more chaos, and Wanda wonders why it must be so. So many threads in this moment, attached to the Avengers and to her and to Pietro, and to the whatever the creature in the cradle is.

It’s fate is tied up all in orange and grey and a burgundy hint to the scarlet veins she always sees. Wanda suspects it is from the stone in it’s brow, the stone that had given them their gifts, given their threads of fate their specific colours.

Will it help, will it harm - it is so hard to _see_  with so many threads of fate tangling around the room. Wanda closes her eyes and opens them without the scarlet sight, sees the chaos of the room, the split superheroes bickering again like children as Thor crashes through the ceiling.

 

* * *

 

It… _is_ , as it says itself. A creature of existence, and when Wanda blinks and glimpses the veins of probability, the way the orange and burgundy interact with all of the others and always, always doing no harm.

Wanda will grant him her trust, for this. It is all too clear he is the opposite to his maker.

 

* * *

 

“It is too much risk,” Pietro hisses to her, hand on her shoulder. He’s concerned for her, Wanda _knows_  that, knows why and in what way, but she will not sit out any battle her brother is a part of, just as he would never sit out a battle she was in.

“Is my choice,” she hisses back, and it is. Whatever comes of the foetus she carries is her choice, and even with probability its future has always been vague. Pietro has always, in the end, bowed to her choices.

“Wanda-”

She can see the concerns in his mind, his worries. How he fears losing her due to the risks inherent in battle and her current circumstances.

“Pietro,” she says softly, and takes his hands in hers. “I do not want to lose you either.”

His head bows, eyes close.

“We will _both_  be at risk, if we fight,” she continues. “And we have always fought better, done better, _together_.”

Pietro sighs, rests his head on her shoulder. “That is true,” he admits. 

“Besides,” she says. “Who will warn half the city to get clear if not me? Who else can get to all the minds?”

Pietro’s smile is as much agreement as forgiveness.

 

* * *

 

Pietro hovers at her shoulders as she sends scarlet out, snaring the minds of the city, warning them all to escape.

 _Go_ , she whispers to his mind. _Warn those outside my reach. The will listen to Sokovians, not to Americans. Warn them_.

Pietro sighs, presses a kiss to her cheek, and sprints to do so.

 

* * *

 

The vein of probability _throbs_  and becomes reality, the world tilting and shaking as half the city is lifted into the sky.

 _Stay safe_  is sent both ways down the bond the twins share, Pietro stretching the very limits of the distance Wanda can reach him at, sprinting through robots that seek to do nothing but harm. Wanda twists scarlet through the minds she still can reach, organises them, groups people in safe spaces, tries to keep all she can from harm.

Novi Grad is her city, her city and Pietro’s, and she will not stand by and let Ultron hurt it’s citizens.

 

* * *

 

 _Hate_  shines, bright as a beacon, in Wanda’s mind. 

 _Anger_  shines from Pietro’s, a light as clear and blinding as a lighthouse’s.

Hate, hate for how they lost their parents, for how the system failed them, for all they endured on the streets, from people’s entitled natures and stupidity, hate for the lies Strucker had fed them, the experiments forced on them, the foetus in her belly that she had never asked for but that might be all that is left of her ability to have children with all that Strucker and List took from them.

Anger, anger at the injustices their city and they have faced, anger at the wars wrought for individual gain and individual power, anger at the folly of those who would not listen, anger at the Avenger’s hope against the legion brought to bear against them, anger that he must see Wanda fighting, fighting and risking _dying_  for the first time in long years. 

Pietro punches through steel and does not care to feel the pain.

 

* * *

 

Wanda sees the veins of probability, fifteen bullets hurtling towards her brother. _Pietro_ , she whispers in the bridge between their minds. _If this fails I am sorry_.

She reaches out scarlet towards the veins and _twists_.

 

* * *

 

Pietro feels the bond to Wanda fall slack. He is unharmed; he can see where the bullets have impacted the road around him, the car to one side, none at all in him or Clint or the child. Hell, there’s none even in the car he shoved.

The bond to his sister is silent.

“Wanda,” he whispers.

“I will get her,” says the voice of the android, Vision, coming over comms. “I am over the church now.”

“Stay,” Clint says, hand snagging on Pietro’s sleeve. “Help me get this kid to the lifeboat.”

Pietro does not want to, even as he feels Wanda’s mind stir, the image of the android rising out of her mind. _Go_ , she murmurs, even as there is pain hiding in her scarlet. _I will be fine_.

The bond falls slack again, but Vision’s voice comes over comms soon after -  _her mind is bright still, her pulse is strong_  - and soon enough she is set beside Pietro on the lifeboat. Pietro settles her head in his lap, combs out her hair, and fixes his eyes on the Helicarrier ahead.

 

* * *

 

Wanda wakes in medical, and has only to glance to her right to see Pietro there, fast asleep in the chair beside her, his hand holding hers. She can feel the exhaustion radiating from his mind, the worry at the time she has been unconscious, and flicks the fingers of her free hand to keep him still sleeping. She’s startled to hear a voice.

“He alright?”

It’s Clint, the archer, standing in the doorway, and Wanda nods slowly. “It is… he is tired. If I do not he will wake and stay awake until I sleep. He thinks he must, to protect me.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, walking forwards from the doorway, sitting in the chair to her left. “Noticed he’s very protective of you.”

Wanda shrugs. “We protect each other,” she says. “We always have. Since we were ten.”

“Since the Stark-bomb,” Clint fills in.

“Two days in rubble, waiting to die. Even if we had not trusted each other more than anyone we would have after that.”

Clint waves a hand, “Yeah, no, not objecting. It makes sense.”

Wanda can see the questions though, turning in the watching purple orb of his mind. She watches him, in careful silence, her thumb gently brushing over the back of her brother’s hand.

“… Is he usually so… intense about it?” Clint asks eventually. “I mean. I’ve seen people be protective, in all kinds of different ways, but with siblings…”

Clint tapers off. Wanda’s watching gaze does not waver.

“Do you think he’s being extra protective because you might be carrying his child?” Clint asks, all in a rush.

Wanda cannot help her laugh. “He is being protective because he is always protective,” she says when she has stopped laughing and has flicked reinforcing sleep-scarlet towards Pietro’s stirring mind. “He always has been, and more so since we were ten, and more so again when Strucker started to experiment on us. Now - right now - he is more protective because I collapsed and because I am in medical. He has always hated it when I am hurt or when I am ill. He will be fine when I am out of here, as long as we are not in danger.” She pauses, looks closely at Clint. “ _Are_ we in danger?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. Your information was solid, you helped us with Ultron - worried everyone with that collapsing act after whatever you did to stop those bullets hitting us all. You might as well be one of us.”

Wanda’s lip curls. “Not as long as Stark is.”

“Really hate him, huh.” Clint’s tone is a mix of appreciative and teasing.

“He killed our parents,” Wanda says. “Our flatmates. Our friends. We spent two days waiting to die when we were only _ten years old_. He sells more weapons, gets more money, destroys more of our city while he is safe in America having parties thrown in his honour. He vanishes, returns, claims pacifism but makes a weapon all for himself. Reveals himself to be the Iron Man, is hailed as a _hero_ after all he has done. Can you say we do not have a reason to?”

Clint’s hand reaches out, gently takes her free one. “You have plenty. I’m not judging here.”

Wanda pauses for a moment, carefully removes her hand from his grasp. The brightly watching purple orb of his mind is, indeed, unclouded by judgement or lies. “Why _are_ you here?”she asks.

Clint is quiet for a few moments, eyes fixed on the rail of the bed. His mind, when he speaks, is clear and honest. “You’re kids,” he says. “Kids who’ve been hurt and lied to and fucked up beyond belief. And you _still_ helped us against a problem that was Tony’s fault, even though you hate him. After all this… we all wanted to check you were ok. I was just the one on shift-watch when you woke up is all.”

There is nothing malicious in his mind as Wanda watches, even as his words are not entirely true, and so Wanda’s lips quirk in the smallest of smiles as she whispers, “Liar.”

 

* * *

 

Pietro wakes to Wanda’s hand combing through his hair, gently tugging out each tangle. He knows this touch, the gentle reassurance of it, and does not need to open his eyes to know she is there.

He does, all the same, because there is nothing quite like _seeing_  Wanda is well.

She looks tired still - but then it has been years since they have not looked tired even after a good night’s rest - but there is colour to her face and she is smiling.

“No nightmares,” he whispers. “You-”

“You needed to sleep,” she murmurs, voice soft and certain and absolute. “I was fine. You did not need to wake.”

He watches her face closely, searches her face, but she is calm, and, while tired, not exhausted. There are cameras here, he knows, he spotted them all in the first day, so he cannot talk freely of what Wanda did. He sends the information on the cameras to her anyway, so she knows.

“A week,” he says, before she can ask. “You have been unconscious a week.” He knows his worry for her shows in his eyes, in his mind, where she can see it as clear as day. “What you did, stretching yourself so far-” He could sob here, he knows he could, and he knows it would be no affectation. He swallows, continues on. “You could have _died_.”

Wanda’s hand is gentle in his hair, gently where it holds his hand on her bedsheets. “Better I collapse and come close to death for you,” she says, “than you die out there alone.”

There is a silent discussion, hovering just beneath the surface of their words, things they have never said, never _needed_  to say, of how their deaths belong to them and them alone, of the vengeance they might wreak for one taken without permission, of what would happen when vengeance was done. Pietro knows Wanda has seen what he plans if she dies.

“Only in battle,” Wanda murmurs, hand trailing past his ear, down his cheek, stroking his jaw. “If someone takes us from us, then, then vengeance, then maybe death. If we die on our own terms we must live on.”

Pietro knows they promised to this, long ago. “This time,” he murmurs, voice rough for all he keeps his voice as level as he can, “This time I would have lost more than you.”

He can feel her, poking gently past the winds at the edge of his mind, into the thought processes that trail from the tree at it’s core, scarlet fingers trailing down blue-silver vines, over reams of running thought - _family, all we have left, hope of new, of more, no longer just two_  - and then her fingers, both hands, cup his face gentle and certain.

“You would not,” she whispers, “have lost me.”

In their minds her scarlet weaves through, paints out the veins she saw, the possibility of her death only an echo following the possibility of his, waiting in the wings for that reveal of fate’s.

“Maybe,” Pietro murmurs back. “It did not stop the worry.”

Wanda’s head tilts to his, and he can see her spreading smile, hear how it infuses her words. “Yes,” she says, “But when has anything stopped you worrying, Pietro?”

Pietro pulls her into a firm embrace and finally lets himself relax.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this please leave a comment!


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